General Counsels are regularly a law firm’s most important contact within the client’s deal team. Seldom ardently-loved, in many instances utterly feared by outside counsel, they face their own challenges in larger cross-border deals. They must be great project managers and true legal all-rounders who are able to ask the right questions at the right time in virtually every area of the law even remotely relevant to their company. They run the whole transactional gamut from selecting investment bankers, auditing firms and outside legal counsel, to ensuring confidentiality and compliance with internal processes, to managing legal risks, conflicts of interests and reputation. Last but not least, they must lead their own ‘internal law firm’, curb the company’s (sometimes over-enthusiastic) executives and accompany the discussions at the board level. The panel will discuss these and other aspects of their M&A experience, and explain – beyond the banal ‘more for less’ – what we as outside counsel can do efficiently to support them.